


i can go anywhere i want (just not home)

by othernightsx



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Mutual Pining, No Lesbians Die, damie in chicago!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29883126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/othernightsx/pseuds/othernightsx
Summary: "We could leave, you know. Pack our bags and get on the first train out of this godforsaken town. It's not like anyone would really miss us if we were gone."OrDani and Jamie run away to Chicago during their junior year of high school.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	1. sometimes to run is the brave thing

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first fic to ever see the light of day, so thank you for being here to read it.  
> Mostly inspired by my own desire to run away and take a train to New York. While it’s completely possible, there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to pull that off, so I’m living through these two for now.
> 
> cw// brief mention of sex at the beginning, and some mentions of abuse

* * *

The idea to run away started as most unrealistic ones tend to when you’re a teenager - a joke.

Jamie had convinced Dani to skip school one day during Sophomore year to go see a movie. Dani was worried about missing class at first, but Jamie assured her that it would be fine. It was May, after all, and most of the major assignments for the year had already been completed. With only a few weeks until Summer break, there wasn’t much to be missed.

What Dani did not tell Jamie was that she was also worried what her then-boyfriend Edmund would say when he found out she ditched school without telling him.

As soon as they got to the movie theater, however, all of Dani’s worries about skipping school melted away. They picked the earliest showing of a coming-of-age movie Dani had never heard of, but Jamie said she read about in a magazine and insisted she would love it. The theater was completely empty, being that people don’t normally go to see movies at 11 AM on a Thursday. The two of them shared a bucket of popcorn, and, taking advantage of the fact that they were the only ones there, talked through practically the entire movie.

Toward the end of the film, the teenage protagonist left her house in the middle of the night and walked 4 miles to a train station. She bought a ticket for the next train leaving town, got on it, and never looked back. Jamie leaned over and whispered to Dani, “that could be us, you know.” Dani’s heart swelled at the thought of leaving everything behind and running away with Jamie, but the idea was quickly shot down in her mind when she realized that she could never leave her mother or Edmund.

Edmund, who called her as soon as he got home and immediately questioned her absence from school that day.

Edmund, who, days later, yelled at her for what seemed like hours when he heard through the grapevine that she had gone to a movie with Jamie, rather than having been sick at home like she told him on the phone, knowing that he would react like this if she told him the truth.

Edmund, who insisted on make-up sex after the fight. Who hovered over her while she lay on her back on his mattress and tried not to cry. Whose weight on top of her made her feel like she was suffocating.

Edmund, who, when he was finished, flopped down beside her and whispered, “I’m sorry Danielle,” in a tone that suggested that he wasn’t actually sorry for yelling at her as much as he just wanted her to act normal again, and she wondered if she would always feel this empty.

Dani spent the night staring at his bedroom ceiling, too afraid to leave, too anxious to sleep, wondering how she had gotten here.

She told Jamie about the fight, how he was angry at her for not telling him she wouldn’t be at school, and how he told her that she made him look like an idiot for not knowing where his own girlfriend was. Jamie, ever compassionate and always willing to listen to anything Dani said, sat beside her as she trembled, recalling the way he shouted at her and paced his room.

Jamie assured her that none of it was her fault, that Edmund was not entitled to knowing her whereabouts at every given moment. She then, as an attempt to get Dani to smile, told her that they could skip town whenever they wanted to, just like the girl in the film.

And the two of them held onto that notion for months. They would sit on Dani’s bed together and imagine where they would go, what they would do. No matter how much they talked about it, though, it never seemed like it was something they would ever go through with.

It isn’t until 8 months later that the idea of leaving the town behind and running away becomes less of an abstract daydream used to keep the girls afloat while they survive high school, and more of a viable option.

*

Dani sits down across from Jamie at their usual table in the cafeteria, swinging her backpack from her shoulder onto the bench. In doing so, the sleeve of her lilac-colored sweater rolls up to reveal a cut about 2 inches long on her right arm. Just as quickly as the sleeve rolled up, she tugs it back down, but not before Jamie sees her injury. Dani silently hopes that the other girl will choose not to say anything. The cut is the product of an accident, after all. She prefers not to make a big deal out of it. However, she knows that if Jamie had seen, it isn’t something she is going to let go. The girls have only known each other for two years, but Dani knows that there is no one else in the world who cares about her more than Jamie does. And if you were to ask her, Jamie would say the exact same thing about Dani.

“Dani…” Jamie says softly, looking up to meet her eyes.

“Don’t.” Dani whispers. She wants to lie to her friend about where the cut came from but knows that there’s no point.

The solemnity in Dani’s voice alone is enough to make her angry. “Dani, I swear to God if she did that to you, I’m driving over to your house right now and having a word with her.”

The “she” in question is Dani’s mother. If she’s being honest, Jamie hates most people. But there aren’t many people she hates more than Karen Clayton. She has only met the woman a few times, but she hears enough stories from Dani to make up for that.

From what she knows, Karen has been drunk for more than half of Dani’s life. Shouting at her daughter seems to be her favorite pastime, and she has the tendency to throw things when she is angry, which is often. Jamie can’t count the number of times she has been on the phone with Dani only to hear a crash or the shattering of glass in the background. When that happens, Dani usually scrambles to end the call so she can clean up whatever her mother broke that time.  
If Karen was the cause of the cut on Dani’s arm, Jamie isn’t sure she will be able to stop herself from going over there and giving her a piece of her mind.

“She didn’t know what she was doing Jamie. She wasn’t trying to hurt me she was just… confused,” Dani says as she nervously runs a hand through her blonde hair.

“What is it that she did exactly?”

“She… I was standing in the doorway to the living room and she threw a vase. Obviously it broke and one of the pieces flew at my arm. I tried to get out of the way but I wasn’t quick enough. And then…” she gestures at her right arm.

“She _threw a vase_ at you?”

“Well, technically she threw it near me.” Jamie rolls her eyes at that. “I just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Dani continues, “but really it wasn’t her fault, she’s just confused. I don’t think she knew where she was.”

“If it wasn’t her fault, whose was it then? Yours? You can’t keep making excuses for her. I’m sorry Dani, but you can’t. She’s your mother. She’s supposed to take care of you, not throw shit at you like you’re a fuckin’ raccoon.”

“I know, I know. But I don’t think she knew it was me. She kept yelling things that didn’t make sense, calling me by my dad’s name. She thought I was him.”

Jamie scoffs. “And that’s supposed to make it better? She’s so drunk she can’t even recognize her own daughter.”

Dani is silent for a minute, unable to look Jamie in the eye. She knows that everything she’s saying is true, but has always wanted to give her mother the benefit of the doubt. Though she knew better, a part of her wanted to believe that Karen still cared about her, despite her not having been a mother to her in almost a decade.

“I know you want to believe that she isn’t a shite person,” Jamie continued, “but you gotta admit, that’s fucked up.”

“Yeah… I- I know, you’re right.”

The two girls don’t speak for a while. Dani eats her lunch while Jamie sketches a plant in the corner of a study guide for a chemistry test. The silence is comfortable, just as it always has been in a way neither girl has ever felt with anyone else. It’s nice. It’s… safe.

“We could leave, you know,” Jamie says out of the blue, and Dani laughs softly. But Jamie shakes her head, and when Dani looks up at her, she sees that she isn’t smiling.

“I’m serious. We can pack our bags and get on the first train out of this godforsaken town. ‘S not like anyone would miss us if we were gone.” When Dani finally looks up at her, she’s unable to read the look in her eye, so she adds, “no offense to you of course it’s just-”

“No, no you’re right about that. You’ve always been my only real friend here. I mean as much as I hate to admit it, I doubt my mother would notice if I didn’t come home from school one day,” she says, and she is only half joking.

“So, what do you say? We’ll make a plan and get the fuck out of here.”

“Jamie,” Jamie’s face falls at the disappointed tone, “I can’t just pick up everything and leave. I’m not like you. I’m too attached to this place, as twisted as that sounds. Plus I have commitments. What about all the kids I babysit?”

“Then the parents’ll find another babysitter, Poppins. Sure, they won’t find another bored teenager lookin’ for a buck who’s as good with kids as you, but they’ll manage. I know you have responsibilities and all, but it’s not your job to constantly be taking care of other people’s problems.” Dani ponders that for a moment, as if she has never entertained the idea that she doesn’t have to be around to pick up slack for everyone.

“You can’t stay here,” Jamie continues. “You can’t keep living with her. It’s not safe and you know it. I’m not forcing you to do anything, you know I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t be suggesting this if I wasn’t 90% sure that it’s what’s best for the both of us and that we could pull it off. All I’m asking is that you consider your options here. We could leave this all behind.”

“I-... I’ll think about it, okay? I promise I’ll consider it, as long as I get to pick where we go if we do this,” she adds with a wink.

Jamie grins. “Deal.”

*

The two of them don’t have any classes together for the rest of the day, so they go their separate ways when lunch ends. Jamie hopes that Dani decides that she wants to do this. She doesn’t want to push, of course, doesn’t want Dani doing anything that makes her uncomfortable just because she thinks it will please Jamie. But she thinks, no, she _knows_ that this is something they both need. They’ve been through a lot in the last two years. Jamie, navigating her foster parents and this town that is not even remotely similar to Northern England, and Dani, dealing with her alcoholic mother and her slightly-possessive now ex-boyfriend. She thinks a break will be just what the both of them need.

Meanwhile, Dani sits in the back of her Geometry class making a list of the pros and cons to leaving. The cons seem to outweigh the pros so far, the majority of them being related to prior commitments she has - she needs to be on-call in case any families need her to watch their kids for a night, any school she misses could be detrimental to her grade (though she has already applied to a few colleges, so she doubts that will change anything now), and then there’s her mother. It’s not that Karen wants her there, or even really _needs_ her there. But she doesn’t want to leave her mother alone for too long. She feels that she always has to be there to pick up the pieces.

That topic falls under the pros list as well. Does she really want to spend the rest of her teenage years cleaning up after her mother and making sure she doesn’t injure herself in her nearly-constant inebriated state?

Another pro, of course, being the opportunity to spend more time with Jamie. Yes, she sees her almost every day at school and on the weekends. But it doesn’t feel like enough. A small part of her wants to be with Jamie somewhere no one else knows them, somewhere free of the judgement of this town. And what better way to do that than to run away together?

She would also love to see more of the world. As far as she can remember, she has only been out of this town once when she was very young, and has never been out of the state of Iowa. When she really thinks about it, she realizes how lonely that sounds.

The world is so big, and Dani knows this. She doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life in this deadbeat town, where the biggest news was when she and Edmund broke up. Dani was the center of the town gossip for months after that. She couldn’t really blame them, the two of them had been a couple since middle school, had been friends for longer, and it seemed like the entire town was rooting for them to get together since the day they met when they were 6 years old. The breakup had been an unexpected one to everyone else, but truth be told, she had been thinking about it since the second year she and Edmund were a couple.

Unfortunately, when she finishes the pros and cons list, she is no closer to making a decision than she was before

*

Dani meets Jamie by her locker at the end of the school day so they can walk out together.  
“So, hypothetically, if we were to leave, where would we go?”

They start walking, Jamie a few feet in front of Dani, walking backward so she can face her when she says, “we could go anywhere, Poppins. Well, not anywhere, I suppose, but anywhere you can take the train to.”

They stop outside of a classroom where a map of America is taped to the wall. They stare at it for a minute or two. Dani hums in thought before she asks, “how does Chicago sound?”

Jamie gives her a look that seems to say _you’re coming around, then?_ , then smiles and says, “Chicago sounds nice. Could be a good start. We can always go to other cities from there if you’re up for it.” Dani looks a little nervous, so she adds, “hypothetically, I mean.”

“I’m still not sure about this. The whole dropping everything and leaving seems pretty daunting.”  
“Well, you don’t have to make a decision now. Think it over. Take as much time as you need.”

*

When Dani goes home that night, she finds the house eerily quiet without her mother’s drunken complaining. The absence makes her incredibly nervous.

There’s a broken wine bottle on the floor next to the sofa, and a big red stain on the beige carpet. She doesn’t want to be there when her mother realizes the damage done to the carpet. It’s probable that Karen will somehow find a way to blame her even though she was nowhere near when it happened.

She hesitantly wanders into her mother’s bedroom and finds her lying in the middle of the floor, just in front of the bed. Dani freezes, somehow both shocked and not surprised in the slightest.  
Luckily, her mother seems to be breathing, her back rises and falls every few seconds.

She knows that she should do something about this, any good daughter would, right? But she’s tired of having to take care of her mother when it should be the other way around. She knows that it could take her 15 minutes just to try to move the unconscious woman from the floor onto the bed. Even if she does try, she risks her mother waking up in a confused state and possibly punching Dani in the face (it has happened before, more times than she can count). She knows that she should move her mother to the bed and drape a blanket over her, not just leave her on the floor like an animal.

She knows this, but she is tired, and she is angry. She is angry because of how irresponsible her mother is. She is angry because of how her mother retracted from her after her father died almost a decade ago. She is angry because of how scared and alone she felt as a kid, and how most of that could have been avoided had her mother just _been there for her_. She is angry because her mother has never really been a mother to her at all.

And she is angry because she feels this way. Because she knows her mother is hurting but she can't bring herself to care anymore.

Jamie's words from earlier in the day flash through her mind. _It's not your job to constantly be taking care of other people's problems._

So she makes a decision. She turns around and walks out of the bedroom, leaving her mother on the floor. She goes into the kitchen, picks up the phone, and dials Jamie's number. Jamie picks up after three rings.

Before the other girl can even say hello, Dani blurts out, "so, when do we leave?"

* * *


	2. let’s get out of this town

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has left kudos or commented so far!  
> I have to say I don't really like this chapter, but I hope you'll bear with me because the next two are my favorites that I've written so far.
> 
> Also disclaimer: I have no idea how much train tickets were in the 80s, so we're just going to pretend that they were $20 and leave it at that.

* * *

“So, when do we leave?” Dani asks almost immediately after Jamie picks up the phone.

“Wh- what?” Jamie tries to hide the surprise in her voice. She needs to be sure she knows what Dani is asking.

“When do we leave?” The other girl repeats, slower this time.

Jamie is sitting on the edge of her bed, twisting the phone cord around her finger. She glances at the clock, it’s only 4 PM. She saw Dani just over half an hour ago, and she had sounded completely unsure about the idea of leaving then. She almost didn’t want to know what had happened in the last 30 minutes that had changed the other girl’s mind.

“We could leave whenever you want,” she says after a few seconds of processing what exactly is going on here. “Could leave Monday morning, that way we could just pretend we’re going off to school and we won’t have to make up an excuse as to where we’ll be. But if you want to wait a little longer-”

“No,” Dani says urgently. She takes a breath before speaking again, “no, I… I think, if we do it, I’d like to leave as soon as possible. If… if that’s okay with you.”

“That’s definitely alright with me, Poppins. Look, you wanna meet up somewhere so we can talk about this some more?”

They meet at a little cafe in town to grab some food before walking over to a nearly-deserted park. They sit quietly on a bench together for a few minutes, Dani sipping her coffee and Jamie watching a flock of birds in the distance. Jamie finally turns to her and asks, “so, what finalized your decision then?”

Dani knew this question was coming. She thought she would be prepared to answer it. Jamie is no stranger to the tales of her mother’s drunken mishaps. Still, this time feels different. Tears prick the corners of her eyes before she quickly blinks them away and shakes her head. 

“Nothing’s final yet,” she begins, unable to meet Jamie’s eyes. “I just want to hear your plan first. Then I guess I’ll make my decision. How do you think we would do this?”

It is a sad attempt at avoiding her question, but Jamie doesn’t pry.

“Well… I suppose it’s simple, really. If you’re serious about Chicago, we make sure we have enough money to get there, one of us can read up on places to stay so we don’t have to sleep on the street,” she adds that last part in the hopes that it will lighten Dani’s mood, relishing in the small smile the other girl gives her when she says it. She continues, “then we pick a day, I’ll drive us to the train station, we’ll buy the tickets - unless you want to do that in advance - and then we’ll be out of here.”

“How long would we stay?” Dani whispers.

“However long you want, love. Couple of days, couple of weeks, your choice.”

“Jamie,” Dani starts, finally looking up at her. “Is this a good idea? Is it, I don’t know, realistic?”

Dani sounds like she is actually curious about the answer, not like she’s trying to get Jamie to question the impulsivity of the plan.

“Completely,” Jamie says with conviction. “It doesn’t have to be forever, you know. Just long enough to remind ourselves of how big the world is. It’s so much more than this godforsaken town.” With that, she gestures around them. “I’m not sure either of us will survive if we don’t remember that. Not sure how anyone does, to be honest,” she adds quietly. 

Dani isn’t sure if Jamie means that literally or figuratively, but she leaves it be. 

She glances at the shops across the street from where they are sitting and realizes that Jamie is right. It is kind of a sad-looking town. 

The town is located just outside of Waterloo, with a population of less than 10,000 people. Aside from a handful of struggling family-owned businesses, the town has two grocery stores, a combined elementary and middle school, a high school, a couple of gas stations, and a few fast-food restaurants mainly employed by teenagers.

There aren’t many places to go for fun, besides a bowling alley and the movie theater. Unless, of course, you count the occasional football game when another team makes the drive from a high school the next town over. As long as anyone can remember, their team has never won a game. 

There used to be a playground in the park they’re sitting at, but a few years ago it was torn down because kids from the high school used to skip class and hang out here to smoke. No one is really sure why they thought that tearing the playground down would stop the teenagers from cutting class or smoking, but it did make for a lot of unhappy young kids.

The people in town are almost worse than the condition of it; mainly white conservatives whose ancestors had grown up working in the cornfields and who aren’t afraid to express their (usually harmful) opinions or complain about practically everything. And there is nothing the town loves more than gossip.

The underage-smoking problem had been the center of the town gossip for years. Up until Dani and Eddie broke up, that is. Dani almost didn’t go through with it because she felt weighed down by the expectations of people she had never even spoken to before. 

Dani realizes that she might not ever get out of this town if she doesn’t at least see a little bit more of the world first. And she wants nothing less than to get out of here as soon as she graduates.

“Okay,” She says after thinking it over just a bit more. “Let’s do it.”

*

Jamie suggests skipping their first class the next morning to grab coffee and start discussing the plan, but Dani insists that they attend as much school as possible if they’re going to be missing a lot soon. 

Jamie is surprised that, by the time lunch rolls around, Dani already has half a plan written out.

“What?” Dani asks as Jamie stares in awe at the notebook.

“No, nothin’, it’s uh- I just wasn’t expecting this. It’s very… thorough.”

“If it’s a bad plan we can always scrap it and redo it together.”

“It looks like a great plan to me, Poppins.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. So we’re really doing this then?”

“I think we are, Jamie.”

The plan is a simple one, really. The two girls will pool their money together, which should leave them with more than enough for two train tickets, there and back. Jamie will pick Dani up outside her house at 8 AM on Monday morning so they’ll be at the train station by 8:45. They’ll buy tickets for the 9:30 train to Chicago, and then if all goes well, they’ll be on their way. 

“So, Monday. That gives us 3 days then. You sure that’s enough time to prepare?” Jamie asks on the phone that night. 

She wants to make sure Dani isn’t rushing into things. She wants them to go, of course, but she knows Dani and wants to make sure that she knows what they’re getting into. She doesn’t want the two of them to get halfway to Chicago only for Dani to panic and realize that this is not what she actually wants.

“Yes, Jamie, I’m sure. I okayed this, remember. I came up with half of the plan. I’m just as serious about this as you are. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I’m not _worried_ , Poppins. It’s just… well you made up your mind pretty quickly. I know you weren’t too sure about it when I first brought it up the other day. Just wanna make sure you’re not making any rash decisions is all.”

“ _Jamie_.” The way Dani says her name sends chills through her entire body. “I promise I want this. Besides, haven’t we been talking about this for a couple months now?”

“Well, yeah. But that wasn’t serious. I will admit, I didn’t think we would actually do it at first. But I’m glad we are. It’ll be fun.” 

“Mhm, me too. So, how much money do we need again?”

“Eighty for all four of the tickets we’ll need to get there and back. That’s the only definite cost. We’ll try to find the cheapest place to stay, which I hope isn’t as difficult as it seems, but it’ll be fine, we’ll figure it out. How much do you have?”

“I have a little more than three hundred saved up from babysitting, plus some from Christmas. What about you?”

“I’ve got a lot still saved from when I was doing yard work for my neighbors last year. Haven’t counted it yet but I’d say there’s about…” she pauses and Dani can hear rustling in the background. “About two-fifty here.”

“I can scrape together a bit more if you think we’ll need it,” Dani says.

“We talkin’ about theft here, Poppins? ‘Cause if you get caught I hope you’re not expecting me to take the fall for you,” she jokes.

Dani laughs at that, which Jamie loves the sound of. It dawns on her that she will never get tired of making Dani laugh. It’s worth it every time.

“Wouldn’t ask you to,” she says after a few seconds. She lowers her voice out of habit, despite her mother not actually being in the house. “I could take a bit from my mom though. I doubt she’d notice it was missing. Even if she did, it’s not like I’ll be here for her to scream at.”

Jamie feels a slight pang in her chest at the thought of Karen Clayton screaming at her daughter any more than she already does. 

“You don’t have to do that,” she says. “We’ll be fine without it.”

“I can though. If we need it.” She sounds dead serious.

Jamie isn’t quite sure what to say. She doesn’t want to encourage Dani doing this. She has never wanted to be a bad influence on Dani. But she remembers that this whole idea came about when they skipped school together all those months ago, and realizes that they’re a little past her being a good influence.

“Only if you _really_ want to, Dani. But I’m tellin’ ya, we will be fine without it.”

They talk for a few more minutes, then Jamie suggests they both get a head-start on packing.

Dani doesn’t quite know where to start. She’s not completely sure what constitutes a “necessity” for an indefinite trip to Chicago in the middle of January. She eventually manages to toss some things together into a duffle bag she found in the depths of her closet.

She is too distracted trying to find her winter coat that she doesn’t hear her mother come home, doesn’t hear her footsteps echoing through the hall, doesn’t hear her bedroom door open with a creak.

“Going somewhere?” She hears her mother croak from the doorway. She startles at the sound, then freezes. All of the blood rushes to her head, making her dizzy. She hadn’t anticipated this.

She briefly wonders if she just doesn’t say anything, if her mother will go away.

She gets her answer when she hears Karen clear her throat loudly, prompting her daughter to turn around and face her.

Dani doesn’t try to fabricate a story to tell her mother as an excuse for the clothes and books sprawled out on her bed next to her bag. Instead, she simply tells her, “no. Not going anywhere,” and smiles, hoping it will be enough to get her off her back.

Her mother, drunk as always, shuffles off to her own bedroom and passes out minutes later. Thankfully, by the next afternoon, she seems to have no recollection of their run in the night before.

*

Jamie, on the other hand, has an easier time of packing. She doesn’t have a lot of belongings to begin with - the mark of someone who has never really had a home. Throughout all of the times she moved around as a kid, there was never much time to get settled, far too little time to get attached. Her current living situation in Iowa is the longest she’s ever lived with a foster family. Still, this fact makes them no different than the rest of the people she has lived with, all just looking for a cash grab, not bothering to give their foster kids the time of day.

That’s partly why she wants to leave. There’s nothing for her in this town here. Nothing except for Dani, of course. She supposes that leaving if only for a few days is better than not leaving at all. 

It’s the kind of small town where everybody knows everybody else. Everyone gets married right out of college. They live in their suburban houses with their three kids and a literal white picket fence around them. The women hardly ever work. They stay at home and tend to the house and the kids while their husbands work their 9 to 5 office jobs, come home, and drink half a bottle of whiskey. Jamie has only lived in this town for a couple of years, but she knows that much is true. 

And everybody stays their whole life, even though they hate it here. They call it quaint, she calls it suffocating. She’s not the type of person to stay in the same place for her entire life. She doesn’t belong in this town, and everybody knows it.

It’s not just the fact that she’s a foster kid from England that sets her apart from everyone else, either. A conservative town in the midwest isn’t exactly the safest place for a lesbian, and while she has never been ashamed of her sexuality, it doesn’t really help her case here. 

Or Dani’s either, for that matter. Although Dani has never explicitly told Jamie she is attracted to women, Jamie is 90% sure that she is. She talked about never feeling particularly attracted to Edmund back when they were still together, mentioned that it always felt _wrong_ to her in a sense. And while not being attracted to Edmund doesn’t necessarily mean that she is not attracted to _all_ men, she is half-sure that’s how Dani meant it. If she’s remembering correctly, the exact word the other girl used was “unnatural.”

She is also fairly certain Dani feels the same way about her as she does about Dani. Since they first met, there has always been an unspoken connection that is a little more than platonic. Neither of them had ever acted on it obviously, Dani was in a relationship for half of the time they’ve known each other, and when they broke up Jamie wasn’t about to spring her feelings on her and possibly rush her into another relationship.

But if Dani is, in fact, attracted to women, Jamie feels a strange need to protect her from the bigotry and homophobia that the town possesses. She knows that Dani doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life in this town either, so she hopes that this trip to Chicago will show her just how easy it can be to leave. And the protectiveness she feels for Dani scares her. It scares her that, against her better judgement, she has grown so attached to the girl. She doesn’t want to see her get hurt.

She shakes the thought from her mind. She doesn’t like to think about it. Knows that her saying anything about it could ruin their relationship. So she keeps her mouth shut.

As soon as high school is over, she’s getting the hell out of this place. For now, though, she’ll take what she can get. A couple days in a big city with her favorite person in the world seems like enough for her.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr @ othernightsx
> 
> Chapter title from This Town by Sasha Sloan.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed the first chapter! Feedback is very much appreciated.  
> Come say hi on Tumblr @ othernightsx
> 
> Chapter title from it's time to go by Taylor Swift


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